Ethics of Technology
Researcher Steven Umbrello guest at the convivial evening
by Alessia Bazzano Originally Published in La Sesia APRIL 8, 2021 10:30
Originally Published in Italian
“Nowadays, innovation is about saving the planet and passing it on to future generations in good shape. The obligation to see that there are possibilities to solve problems is the essential aspect of responsible innovation”: so l ‘Italian-Canadian Steven Umbrello, researcher of Ethics of Technology at the University of Turin, made his debut at the convivial evening of the Rotary Club Vercelli chaired by Luigi Omodei Zorini. Theme: ‘Do artifacts have politics? Technology ethics for the 21st century’.
“The research domain I deal with is the ethics of technology: my work is based on how we can design technologies for human values, satisfying the requirements for responsible innovation — said Umbrello — Innovation often leads to new features, which lead to economic prosperity. For example penicillin, clean water, or sanitation, we can consider them as a result of innovation, which increases our life expectancy. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted from poverty throughout history. Innovation, however, is not good in itself. There are innovations that appear as blessings when conceived, but which then generate moral concerns. An example? Pesticides are nowadays associated with death and disease. The United Nations provides a list of urgent moral goals for innovation and applied science on a global scale”.
Technology is never neutral, but always charged with the value it inherits from its creator: “Not only should our innovations be geared towards solving our great global challenges, but they themselves must be an expression of our shared moral values,” he explained. With a series of examples and asking listeners questions, Umbrello made the evening engaging: “The artificial thought experiments I am showing you illustrate how thinking about responsible innovation requires a perspective on how to make moral choices. Responsible innovation consists of anticipating critical situations of moral choice and take responsibility for others in a given situation. It is important to learn to think about ways to prevent tragic choice situations from occurring, much more than learning to think about them once they have come into existence.”
“What I tried to share tonight is that the innovation process can be seen in different ways and that the management of that process changes accordingly. The process can be seen as a project, the development of a new product, which subsequently it is introduced on the market and spreads: all this requires management skills — he said — The success of the process is evaluated in terms of large-scale diffusion. The technology is improved over time, with its versions subsequent to the first. The process requires entrepreneurial skills to transform technological functionalities into products that meet market needs and lead to imagine how subsequent products can be inserted into market niches, to pave the way for diffusion. Responsibility is always required “.
